Harncourt Dvorak Stabat

Antonín Dvorák's Stabat Mater, Op. 58, truly merits the adjective "tragic"; it was written after the deaths of two of the composer's children in succession, and his grief rolled out in great, Verdian waves. There are several strong recordings on the market, including an earlier one by conductor Jiří Bělohlávek himself, but for the combination of deep feeling, technical mastery from musicians and singers who have spent their lives getting to know the score, and soloists who not only sound beautiful but are seamlessly integrated into the flow, this Decca release may be the king of them all. To what extent was the strength of the performance motivated by Bělohlávek's likely fatal illness (he died days after the album entered the top levels of classical charts in the spring of 2017)? It's hard to say, although he also delivered top-notch performances of Dvorák's Requiem in his last days. The members of the Prague Philharmonic Choir sing their hearts out in the gigantic, shattering opening chorus, which has rarely if ever had such a mixture of the impassioned and the perfectly controlled. Sample the chorus "Virgo virginium praeclara" to hear the magically suspended quality Bělohlávek brings out of the singers in lightly accompanied passages.

Antonín Dvorák's Stabat Mater, Op. 58, written in the aftermath of the deaths of three of his children, is a sober and powerful work, inexplicably neglected and unlike any other work of choral music from the 19th century. Perhaps most performances don't capture its full weight, but this live recording from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Mariss Jansons, does so. There are many deep pleasures here. The orchestra's choir is extraordinary: rich yet without a hint of wobble and utterly clear in its sense of the text. Jansons keeps things at a deliberate pace that lets the music breathe and the currents of personal experience rise to the surface. The soloists, none terribly well known, are fine in their individual numbers, but absolutely transcendent in ensembles, nowhere more so that in the sublime "Quando corpus morietur" finale (track 10); there are a couple of other strong recordings of this work, but it seems likely that no one has ever matched this conclusion. The live recording from the Herkulessaal in Munich is impressively transparent and faithful to the spontaneity of the event. A superb Dvorák release.

Dvorák's Stabat Mater, Op. 58, was finished in 1880, wrenched out over several years after the death of the composer's daughter. It is a sizable setting that has been largely overlooked in favor of Dvorák's later works, but increasing interest in Romantic-era choral music has brought new performances. It has few specifically Czech elements, gaining its interest partly from its combination of a rather formal quality with strong personal feeling. This reading, conducted by Estonia's Neeme Järvi, is hard to beat. Start with the live engineering from the London Philharmonic Orchestra's new Royal Festival Hall, getting clarity from very large forces.

Like a prayer that comes from the heart "… stood the mournful Mother weeping" whispers the chorus after the orchestral introduction of Antonín Dvorák 's most celebrated choral work, the Stabat Mater Op. 58. As the work builds to include the four vocal soloists, the obsessively repeated main motif of a descending chromatic line begins to work its magic on the rapt audience.

We first heard Sawallisch in Prague conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra during the Prague Spring festival of 1958 and since then he has been a guest at this festival seven times more. In between, however, he has also been a guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic and we even heard himas a pianist with Josef Suk as his sonata partner. Sawallisch, as one of the leading opera conductors today and a great admirer of Czech music, literally fell in love with the Czech Philharmonic Chorus which he conducted in big oratorios and cantatas (he even invited it in 1964 to the Milan La Scala for several performances of Wagner's Lohengrin). He very gladly visits us tocollaborate both with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and its chorus.

Simon-Pierre Bestion has chosen to mirror two Stabat Mater that are more than 150 years apart: "in these two works I can feel the same tonal language, the same expression of sorrow" says the founder of La Tempête… "I have decided to ‘augment’ Scarlatti’s orchestration and ‘diminish’ Dvořák’s, so they can meet on even ground. To the Scarlatti I have added string parts sometimes doubling the vocal lines, colla parte , as was often done at the period: this not only allows the sound to be amplified, but adds an extra timbre to the voice. For the Dvořák, I have transcribed the original piano part into its minimum orchestral dimension, that is, for strings. This creates a common sound world between the two works – I would even say they have the same kind of lyricism in common, with just the timbres of the piano, organ and theorbo standing out."

No one knew when Robert Shaw made this recording in November, 1999, that it would not only be a crowning personal achievement for the conductor and his Atlanta musicians, but also would stand as a final and fitting memorial to the work of one of this century's finest and most influential conductors. Shaw's death from a stroke three months after the sessions assured that this last recording would get extra attention, primarily viewed through a lens of reverence, respect, and retrospection.